


never find it if you’re looking for it

by monsterq



Category: Doctrine of Labyrinths - Sarah Monette
Genre: (past) - Freeform, Archive warnings apply to past not present, Childhood Sexual Abuse, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, First Time, Flashbacks, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, Kinda, M/M, Past Child Abuse, Post-Canon, Sibling Incest, Worst Childhoods in the World Club: Founding Members, abuse recovery, despite all the tags this is a story about love, fear of water, sexual identity crisis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-06 03:27:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20500100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monsterq/pseuds/monsterq
Summary: I lay there in the blackness with my eyes open, my thumb stinging, listening to him breathe less than a foot away, almost the same as the ocean surging against the rocks. I didn’t think I’d ever fall asleep, so of course I did, fast as a body off a bridge.But that didn’t mean my head was done pulling tricks on me.Mildmay and Felix have settled into Grimglass, but the past isn't so easy to leave behind. As they carve out a new life on their own terms, Mildmay struggles with questions he thought were answered a long time ago.





	never find it if you’re looking for it

**Author's Note:**

> Credit and thanks to [Lena7142](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lena7142) for inspiring this fic with her headcanon and for giving me the green light to run with it.
> 
> Title comes from ["Blue and Yellow"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZTKClzzUmI) by The Used, which I think is a fitting song on a number of levels.

Summer in Grimglass ain’t nothing to get worked up about, but when the sun started coming out again on the regular, sometime back in Floréal, I could’ve written it a love song. There was still plenty of rain, and half the time the sky was a mess of lumpy porridge, and the wind would come out to shove and flick at you and then scamper. But it wasn’t so bitter cold, and more days than not you could feel the sunlight on your skin. So I’d take it.

We’d been here coming up on an indiction, Felix and me. I know what I just said, but truth to tell, I liked it. Right outside the door of our house—two stories and brick and butted right up against the lighthouse—the ocean was there, and it was different every time you looked at it, colors and shapes and feelings smashing against each other. You could watch it for hours.

The house got built not long after the lighthouse for people like me and Felix. Well, me and Felix probably ain’t anything like what they had in mind, but they meant it for the lighthouse keepers, I mean. The library was on the ground floor, along with the kitchen and the parlor, and then there were two bedrooms upstairs. The lighthouse was too skinny to have much in it except the stone stairs winding up the inside and the lantern room at the top, plus the watch room and maintenance room under that, but there was this metal catwalk outside around the lantern room that I liked more than anything else it might’ve had. I liked sitting up there and looking out at the ocean and the town from way up high, and it turned out I liked the machinery too, all the shit it took to keep the light on. I liked the puzzle of it, and the quiet, and the way it all made sense if you just shut up and paid attention. Felix wasn’t crazy about it, which wasn’t no surprise.

Of course, the lighthouse stairs were a bitch and a half, a septad-times worse than the Mirador. But we were working on it. For now we’d rigged up a kind of crate and pulley on the back of the lighthouse, away from the water, to lug me up to the catwalk on bad days. It worked okay, but Felix was always grumbling about what if this rusted or that got chewed, and he had all these ideas about some kind of machine to ride up the stairs on the inside, since there wasn’t no room in the middle. I mean, he had a point about everything that could go wrong, but I figured that was life, and as long as we checked the thing pretty regular, I didn’t know that we needed to fuck around with some crazy stair machine. But I’d do better trying to make the ocean sit still than get an idea out of Felix’s head, so mostly I just didn’t worry about it.

Anyway, I was out on the catwalk. It was warm out, and I had my shirtsleeves rolled up. The wind was tugging at my clothes in starts and stops. I was just sitting there, leaning back against the wall and looking at the ocean, because I didn’t have nothing special that needed doing and it seemed like someone ought to watch the show it was always putting on.

I heard the door to the catwalk ease open and didn’t look around. “Hey.”

“Am I interrupting?” Felix asked. His voice was halfway between sarcastic and serious, like he was worried I might want him to fuck off but he wasn’t going to admit he was worried, neither.

I just shook my head. “C’mere. How’re the books?”

When he walked, I could feel the catwalk shiver, feel it all the way up through my body. He sank down next to me and started to stretch his long legs out, then folded them up again when he figured out there wasn’t no room. I was still looking at the ocean, but I could see his red hair from the corner of my eye, a splash of color like the sunset that was gonna light up the sky in less than an hour. “I’m looking into Grimglass’s history—prehistory, really,” he said. “The things that lived here thousands or millions of years ago. A manuscript I found suggests a very interesting spell I’d like to try. If it’s to be believed, I could use the traces of life left in rocks to look directly into the past.”

“Really? You could see them alive and everything, thousands of indictions ago?”

He waved a hand, his rings catching the light and throwing it back at me. “Perhaps. We’ll see if anything comes of it. First I’ll need to gather the materials.”

“I can help,” I said, before I even knew it was going to come out of my mouth. But I’d seen rocks like he was talking about, prints of shells and teeth and bones down by the water, and anyway I kind of liked helping him with hocus stuff these days. I liked the patterns of it, and Felix would tell me about the metaphors if I asked, and they were kind of like stories.

“Oh, good,” Felix said. “Ideally, I’ll have an assortment. As many different kinds as possible. The spell itself should be simple enough if I set things up properly. Of course, I’ll have to write up my findings afterward, and that will take much longer.”

“Yeah, that’ll be terrible for you,” I said, deadpan. “See you in a few decads.”

When I turned to look at him, he gave me a crooked grin, the real kind that made my insides turn over. “Well, I’ll try to poke my head out now and again. I’d miss your company.”

“Oh,” was all I could say. My mouth had dried out while I’d been sitting here, but I hadn’t noticed ’til now.

I looked back at the ocean. Felix didn’t—I could tell out of the corner of my eye. I didn’t think he was scared of it, not exactly, not from this distance. But he’d still rather eat his rings than get in it, and of course he couldn’t swim worth a damn. Can’t learn a thing if you never get near enough to let it touch you.

Which made me nervous as fuck, if you want the truth. I’d been rolling the idea around in my head for months, if I could try and get Felix to let me teach him, just so he didn’t get his damn fool self killed one of these days. For fuck’s sake, we lived spitting distance from the biggest heap of water you’re ever likely to find, and it would just figure if Felix went and drowned in it after surviving everything else. That’s the gods’ favorite kind of joke, ’least in my experience.

But frankly, and I ain’t proud of it, I didn’t have the guts to ask. I knew he wouldn’t like it, knew he’d get upset—he wouldn’t tear me to shreds for it, not these days, but it still wouldn’t be no fun for either of us—and in the end it probably wouldn’t do a lick of good.

You try making Felix do something he don’t want to. I’ll wait.

Felix was looking at his hands, and I almost said something but closed my mouth again. Then I said, “I gotta check the burner.”

Felix nodded and stood up, pushing his hair out of his eyes. “I suppose I’d better get back to my own work.”

He left, and for a second I got stuck in my head, staring at the water and the sky and the place they crashed together, and then I remembered to actually do the thing I said I would. Didn’t take me long—nothing had got fucked up since yesterday, and anyway, when they built this place, I guess they figured it had one job and it’d better do it right. So they built it to stick around, and it worked.

When I’d dusted the lens and given the light more fuel, I took the long way down. I didn’t have no good reason for doing it, and I won’t say the box ain’t handy. But sometimes I’d just rather take myself places with my own legs, even if one of them don’t work right. I did use Jashuki, and my leg felt okay when I got to the bottom, so I figured it wasn’t too stupid.

When I came out into the open, the sun was getting ready to drop under the water, and the sky was stained a million colors like fresh-bruised ribs. I saw motion around the corner of the lighthouse, a black tail disappearing—the stray cat I’d got used to seeing over the winter.

Felix was maybe five septad-yards away, just the back of him outlined against the sky. He was crouched by the edge of the cliff, holding out a rock to catch the light of the setting sun. When he was satisfied, he stuck it in his pocket.

I headed over instead of going in the house to figure out a meal, even though my stomach was kind of hinting that it wanted something and wasn’t gonna ask so nice next time. “Want a hand?”

He turned around. With the light behind him, I could just make out the flash of teeth in his smile. “I won’t refuse you.”

My leg wasn’t gonna be too happy with me, but I sat down near him anyway. There were rocks fine as grains of sand and ones big as my head; I focused on the ones I could hold and look at.

The rocks with critter shapes in them weren’t hard to find, actually. A spiral, some long worm things, what looked like a giant beetle. The pockets of my coat started bulging.

At some point I looked up and couldn’t see Felix no more. My heart stopped pumping for a second, and then I heard him muttering to himself. It only took a second to find him crouched on the crooked little staircase someone’d carved into the cliff leading down to the sea.

“Felix,” I said.

“Yes?” He was leaning to look closer at a little ledge of stone to his right.

“You about ready to go in?”

“In a minute,” he said. “I just need to—”

And then his foot slipped, and he fell straight into the ocean with a splash. His head was under before either of us could yell.

I yanked my coat off and left it on the ground, along as I didn’t want all those rocks to drown us both, and as he bobbed up again, panicking and thrashing around, I jumped in too.

The seawater got in my mouth first thing, and my ears were full of the crashing waves, and I couldn’t hardly move my limbs on account of my clothes trying to soak up the whole fucking sea. But I got my arm around Felix and managed to haul him sideways to where there was a lip of shore. I shoved him up on it and he coughed and coughed, lying in the thin, gritty mud like—well, like something that just came near enough to drowning to kiss it. He couldn’t’ve been in the sea more than a minute, but I swear a whole pond of water came out of his lungs. ’Course, I was too busy freaking out myself to measure.

When Felix was finally breathing again, he just lay there awhile, and then he said, his voice thick and scratchy like wool, “It seems we’re making this a habit.”

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking,” I said, because there wasn’t nothing else I could say. My mouth tasted brackish and putrid. My throat burned.

He sighed and dragged a hand across his face. “I don’t know if I gathered enough samples for the spell.”

“That’s okay. You can figure it all out later,” I said. I didn’t want him getting no bright ideas about trying again. Not that I thought he would, really—he was even more spooked than I was, still shivering and not breathing right, and the water wasn’t cold enough for that on its own. But you never could tell with Felix. “Let’s get you inside.”

There were times he went wandering into books and work and didn’t come out for days. Sometimes I thought he got himself lost on purpose—maybe ’cause he’d rather be in there than out here, or maybe just to prove he could do whatever he wanted, didn’t need rest or nothing like a normal person. Except he did, so of course I was the poor fuck that had to drag him out kicking all the way. And once in a while he was like a bird that flew through a window and couldn’t find its way out again, not even when you opened the damn door, and there wasn’t nothing for it but to catch him and wrestle him out of his studies yourself.

But today, he let me haul him up and guide him toward the staircase, and I waited while he climbed it first, ready to catch him if he slipped. Or try, anyway. I figured at least I could stop him from bashing his head open on the rocks. And when we were both up on higher ground, I picked up my coat and draped it over my soaked shoulder, and we both kind of leaned on each other as we squelched our way up to the house.

Once we were inside, though, it was like he realized what he was doing. He was better with touch than he used to be, even looked for it if it was me or maybe Kay or Corbie when she visited, but sometimes it was like he had to trick himself into it. Now he put some space between us in a hurry, practically ran to his room and then the library and shut himself in with his books.

I wasn’t too worried. Sometimes when something scared Felix, or when he scared himself by leaving himself open, he needed space. But these days, when he built his walls back up again, he left room for me. So after I changed, I cooked a meal instead of worrying.

When it was ready, he still hadn’t made a peep, so I knocked on the door. “Felix? You want food?”

There was a shuffling, and the door swung open. “Mildmay!” Felix said. He looked kind of wild eyed. He’d changed his clothes, but his hair was still a damp, knotty mess. “Help me with this spell, would you?”

“The rock spell?” I edged warily into the room. “So you got enough?”

“If we add the ones you gathered, it should be fine. Put them in the pile.” He pointed at the middle of the room, where the furniture had been dragged clear and the rocks were heaped on the floorboards, plus some candles. Symbols were chalked part of the way around them.

“Sure you don’t want to eat first?” I knew it wasn’t going to be no use arguing with him, though, so I scooped the rocks out of my coat pockets and set them on the floor with his.

“I’m sure. This won’t take long.” He crouched down with his chalk again.

“What’s this gonna do again?” I asked, keeping out of his way.

He thought about it. “The spell should show me…what they were, how they became themselves. The hidden things. Theoretically, it could work on any object I focused my attention on. After the spell is complete, I should only need to meditate to see what it has to show me. The effects should fade after a few days.”

I wasn’t crazy about all them shoulds, but it didn’t sound too dangerous. “What d’you need me for?”

“Stand over there, if you will, and when I tell you to, light the candles.” He handed me a pack of lucifers and went back to chalking symbols on the floor. “You’ll walk the circle counterclockwise, and when they’re all lit, return to the north point. Make sure to stay outside the sigils, or there could be transference.”

I made my way to where he’d pointed. I liked watching him work, the way he muttered to himself while he drew the lines, the focus, his long fingers. Not that I’d ever tell him that.

When he was happy with the symbols and the candles were where he wanted them, he stood opposite me and said, “Now.”

I walked to my right, struck a lucifer, and crouched to light the first candle. Straightened up, went on to the next. My leg wasn’t too happy about all that going up and down, but it wasn’t nothing it couldn’t handle. When I was back where I’d started, Felix dropped to his knees and sketched one more symbol inside the circle, in front of the pile of stones. He whispered a long string of words under his breath, his voice still rough from all that seawater, and pressed his hands flat inside the circle.

My ears popped, and my stomach lurched. Closing my eyes to catch my breath, I saw orange spots stamped against the dark of my eyelids, clustered together like the stones were. When I looked again, the candles had gone out, and the chalk marks had vanished.

Then I smelled smoke.

“Shit!” I slapped at my coat and found a hard lump in one of the pockets. A stone I’d missed. I turned my pocket inside out to let it drop and winced to think of the floorboards scorching, but it wasn’t hot no more, wasn’t smoking, if it ever had been. It just hit the ground hard, rolled a couple inches, and settled.

Felix was staring. “That was in your pocket?”

“Looks like.”

“Damn.” He rose to his feet and made a motion like he wanted to touch me but changed his mind. “Do you feel all right?”

“Should I? You didn’t say nothing about this hurting us.”

“No, no, it should be fine,” Felix said. He still didn’t look happy, though. When I kept staring at him, he sighed. “Having one of the focus objects on you…it may have left a residue. Muddled the threads of attachment between the spell’s subject and object, its caster and target, the viewer and the—” He shook his head. “Never mind. I’m sure it won’t be a problem.”

None of that was what you’d call reassuring, but there wasn’t nothing we could do about it anyway. “Okay,” I said. “Now do you want food?”

Hours later, when I was getting ready for bed, he came to me. He showed up in the doorway of the washroom while I was cleaning my teeth and taking my hair down from its plait, and then he just stood there, shifting his weight like he’d just realized he hadn’t thought about what came next. When he looked like he might make a run for it, I said, “You okay?”

“Fine,” he said, all shifty, not looking me in the eyes.

And then I knew what he couldn’t make himself ask. So I did it for him. “You want to stay in my room tonight?”

He looked relieved. “I wouldn’t mind.”

If you really want to know, I was kind of relieved myself. I kept thinking about the way he’d looked all wrung out and twitching on the shore, his face the wrong color, water pouring from his lungs. Just seeing him in one piece was going a long way to screwing my head back on right. I wasn’t gonna say it, but it would be good to have him next to me tonight. Last winter, there were a lot of nights I slept in his room or him in mine, along of the cold, I guess. But now that it was warm, we didn’t have no reason to share. We weren’t freezing our asses off. And there were nights I wasn’t as happy about that as I think I should have been.

So we got ready for bed. He got in first, facing away, and when I lay down, I could feel the mattress sloping a little toward him, plus the heat of his skin. Even so, I got this weird urge to touch him, make sure he was really there. I wanted to feel his skinny, pale arm where his shoulder poked over the blanket, feel him solid and nowhere else but here. I wanted to press my face up against his back and feel his lungs rise and fall. His hair looked soft as silk, and the candle I hadn’t put out yet caught flickers of red like he was burning.

Kethe, I wasn’t making no sense. I tried to think about something else, but my lungs felt tight, like they couldn’t pull in enough air. But I wasn’t sick. I was probably healthier than I’d been for most of my first three septads.

I rolled over and pinched out the candle a little too slow, and a piece of the wick stuck to my thumb. I hissed at the burn as I flicked it off into the dish.

“What happened?” came Felix’s voice from the dark. “Are you hurt?”

“It’s nothing,” I muttered, embarrassed. “Just the candle. I’m okay.”

I heard the silence that meant he was thinking about asking more, but then it turned into the silence that meant he was going to let it go. I lay there in the blackness with my eyes open, my thumb stinging, listening to him breathe less than a foot away, almost the same as the ocean surging against the rocks. I didn’t think I’d ever fall asleep, so of course I did, fast as a body off a bridge.

But that didn’t mean my head was done pulling tricks on me.

“Poor Milly-Fox. This really is the best you can do, isn’t it?”

I don’t need to look at Keeper where she’s sprawled out against the pillows to know she’s smiling. “I’m just tired,” I say, still pulling on my cock even as my cheeks flush hot with shame. Come on, come on…

“Oh, sweetheart, you know you can never lie to me.” She’s lounging under me, skinny and white, and her sharp nails drag across my thigh. They bite into my skin and then relax, and I can tell she’s working up to something. “It isn’t your fault, really.”

I don’t say nothing, along as I know I’ll just make it worse. I just grit my teeth and will my prick to work with me. Kethe, it’s gotta be some kind of joke that your body always decides to fuck you over right when you most need it on your side.

I’m almost there when Keeper says, “You wish I were someone else, don’t you?”

“No,” I say, even though I kind of do. It ain’t that I want someone in particular, and it ain’t that I don’t know it’s worth anything to be her favorite. Only sometimes it feels like more time with her just means more chances to fuck up. And I think that’s how she wants it, too.

But it feels good, it does, and I want to make her happy. Happy with me. And if she’s got to play games, that’s just Keeper. Finally, I get myself hard.

’Course, that’s when she goes on. “I know what you want. You wish I were a boy.”

A jolt goes through me, and I try to pull back, only she grabs me by the cock and squeezes, and a high sound comes out of my mouth. I try and make it into words. “I don’t. I ain’t—”

“Then why aren’t you fucking me, Milly-Fox?” she asks sweetly.

I take the damn hint, even though I ain’t stupid enough to think it’ll do me any good in the end. When I’m inside her, I give myself one breath to adjust to the hot clutch around my cock and then start moving. I don’t want to get her pissed by coming too quick, so I let my mind go away a little. If she don’t want another round, I can catch Jessie before she goes to sleep. She promised me a story.

Keeper hums and shifts her hips. “That’s a little better. But your eyes are still somewhere else. Who are you thinking about?”

“No one,” I mumble, lifting my hand between her legs so I can get her off.

She catches it. “Going molly on me, Milly-Fox?”

I shake my head hard. My stomach’s swooping. I ain’t. I don’t want to fuck a man.

“Don’t you think I would know?” She smiles. “You’re so young, still learning what you want. How lucky that you have me to guide you through it.” She quits talking for a second, and her smile goes wide, real wide, like she’s planning to eat me whole. “Now imagine I’m a boy.”

I try to pull away, and she locks her legs around me. “Come on, my little molly boy. Imagine it. You’re deep inside a man’s ass, just like you’ve always wanted. Think of his hairy sack, how it wobbles as you thrust. No, keep fucking me. Show me you mean it. Doesn’t that feel better?”

I’m sweating, swallowing over and over so I don’t puke. Just gotta finish this. Give her what she wants, and she’ll be happy.

The room is wrong, I notice. The bed is wrong. Where the fuck am I?

“Wrap a hand around his cock,” she says. “Do you think it’s bigger than yours?”

I woke up sweating through my sheets. I was hard, and I felt like I might throw up. The sun was already spread on the floor from the east window, warm and sticky. I turned my head and saw the other side of the bed was empty. The pillow was squashed from Felix’s head, but he wasn’t here. Usually I woke up before he did, but I guess nothing was going to go like normal today.

Part of me wished he were here, familiar and _him_, just so I’d have something to not feel sick about. The rest of me knew that’d just make things worse. Weirder.

I breathed through my nose and tried to will my stupid cock soft again. Seemed like it took an indiction, but eventually it went down, and my stomach settled.

Shoving the sheets off me, I stared at the ceiling for a minute, checking all my body parts were where they should be. When I knew for sure I was really awake, I got up, testing my weight on my bad leg to check I wouldn’t fall over as soon as I took a step. It was working fine, even if my head wasn’t.

Powers and saints. If that was what I got for sleeping, maybe I should just fucking quit—didn’t seem like it was doing me no good. Yeah, I knew that wasn’t sensible, but sometimes a person gets tired of being the sensible one.

See? I wasn’t making no sense. Sleeping’s supposed to get you less fucked up, not more.

I thought about the spell and the stone left in my pocket, and then I stopped thinking about it in a hurry.

I dressed, went downstairs, and found Felix staring out the window. If I craned my neck just right, I could see that black cat licking himself by the cliffside. I don’t know what made me say it—maybe the scare from yesterday plus dreaming about all that shit from more than a septad ago just ganged up to shake my brain until my thoughts fell out—but I blurted, “I could teach you to swim.”

He whipped his head around so fast you would’ve thought I said I could teach him to finger a ghoul. When he figured out where he’d put his voice, he said, “Whatever gave you the impression I’d be interested?” He was trying to sound like he didn’t give a fuck, but his voice was too tight and high.

“I dunno,” I said, annoyed even though I couldn’t’ve expected nothing better. “I thought you might be _interested_ in not drowning next time you go falling in the ocean.”

“I won’t!” Felix snapped. “There will be no more—no more falling.” He’d gone white.

I finally sat down, figuring this could be a long one. “I mean, I hope not, but with your luck I wouldn’t bet on it.” I could’ve been nicer about that, but I didn’t want to give him room to fool himself. Plus I was tired. “Felix, we live so close to the ocean we could piss in it from the doorway. All I’m saying is drowning now’d be a stupid way to die, after everything.”

He was getting twitchy as a cornered rat, and I could tell this wasn’t going nowhere. He shook his head, but not like he wanted to die that way after all. “Look,” he said, and then he stopped. Around the time I was thinking I should maybe just go, Felix said, “I have work to do. I don’t have the time. And I assure you I can protect myself from any ill-intentioned bodies of water. You needn’t worry.” And he smiled. He was good at faking smiles, Felix, but this time I don’t think he even tried.

Well, the conversation was done with, sure as a stiff, so I kept my mouth shut about how full of shit he was. “I’m gonna go to town,” I said instead. “Got some things to buy.”

He nodded, but I don’t think he really heard me.

’Least you got him thinking about it, Milly-Fox. Probably won’t be too long until you know if that’s good or not.

I grabbed a piece of toast and booked it before he could decide to get pissy. It was about a septad-minute walk to town with nothing but the wind and the ocean in my ears. That gave me time to get my head sorted out, and with Jashuki I didn’t have no trouble with my leg.

The water sighed along next to me the whole way, and usually I liked it fine, but this morning it just made me think again about Felix getting his idiot self killed. I couldn’t force him to learn to swim, and I wouldn’t want to try, but maybe one day he’d fall in without me being there to fish him out. That made me cold from breastbone to spine, even with the sun shining down hot on my hair.

In town, I bought a pack of lucifers, sewing thread, and salt. The clerk told me good afternoon, asked after my leg and Felix. Then I wandered through the other shops, looking at what they had and buying another couple things. Stuff we didn’t need, exactly, but we had the money, and that was still new enough I couldn’t take it for granted. I wondered if I ever would. I got myself lunch, too—the baker was another one who knew my name, even acted glad to see me—and when it was all gone, I realized how hungry I’d been.

People around here stared at me and Felix, yeah, but not as much as I’d figured they would before we got here. We weren’t never going to blend in, but there were other people with scars here, and anyway I think folks expected us to be weird. So they didn’t make a fuss about it, just did business and made small talk like with anyone. A lot of ’em didn’t even have to ask me to repeat myself no more.

I sat down on a bench outside the apothecary to give my leg a rest. It was around the ninth hour of the day already, and I felt more settled than I had before. Well, it ain’t like I could’ve been less.

There was this tree next to me shedding flowers like it didn’t want to be caught with ’em. I could smell beans being cooked, and it made me notice the saltwater smell mixed in. You could smell the ocean everywhere around here, and pretty soon you quit noticing it. But once in a while a whiff of it would hit you in the face, and you’d realize how it was everywhere, in your nose, your lungs, your blood. I didn’t mind it.

I leaned back against the whitewashed wall. It was rough but warm from the sun.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a mutt sizing me up. It wanted to see if I was safe enough to come close or if it’d be smart to take the long way, and Kethe, I knew what that was like, so I stayed where I was so as not to spook it. I did turn my head to look, though, and we checked each other out.

The dog wasn’t as clean as she could’ve been, but she wasn’t as dirty, neither, and she had all her hair and didn’t look hurt, so I figured she was doing okay. She was skinny as a dandelion, though. You could’ve stood her up on her back legs and climbed her ribs like a ladder.

I guess she decided I was all right, because she came a little closer. Then I remembered I had a little of my sandwich left over from lunch. I took it out of my pocket, and she tensed up, turning her head.

That’s when I noticed her eyes, along as they were fixed on me as bright as the lighthouse beam. Well, fuck, I said to myself. She had skew eyes like Felix. Blue and brown.

She didn’t want to get in my reach to take the food, which was just more proof she had brains, so I tossed it between us. With another look to check I wasn’t gonna jump her, she darted forward and ate it in one bite. Then she went back again, but not too far. She kept her eyes on me.

“Sorry,” I told her. “That’s all I got.” I don’t think she believed me, but there wasn’t nothing I could do about that. I set off for home.

Of course, it wasn’t even a minute before I heard claws clicking on the cobblestones behind me.

I turned around. She was middling in size, head coming to maybe halfway up my thigh, and her shortish fur was a mixed-up pattern of black and white and gray, all mottled together, spots standing out here and there. A stripe of white went down her face, and there was a splotch of black over her blue eye that curled most of the way around it, like an eyebrow that got too excited and forgot to stop growing. Made the blue stand out like a jewel in a velvet case. She sat when I looked at her, looked at me right back.

Milly-Fox, you fuckwitted fleece-brain. Growing up in the city, I’d learned pretty quick you didn’t feed a stray if you didn’t want it following you home, and my Keeper at least didn’t take kindly to that type of thing. So it wasn’t like I didn’t know better. Maybe I could call it another stupid moment from a bad night’s sleep.

“You’ve got the wrong idea,” I told the mutt. “Just ’cause I gave you some of my crust and all don’t mean I’ve got food coming out my ears, and even if I did, who says I’d give it to you?”

She gave me a look like I was full of shit. Yeah, smart dog.

“Well, look,” I said. “That’s all I have, so you better turn around. If you go down Market, I saw someone dumping food behind the big yellow building. So go look for that, okay? You can’t come home with me.”

And yeah, I know I was talking to a fucking dog, and more than I usually talk to anyone who ain’t Felix, when it comes to that. But at least she didn’t care if my words came out slurred, and she didn’t care about my scar, neither.

She sighed. I started walking again. Maybe she’d listen to me—it had to be past time that someone did. But when I heard her claws clicking behind me again, I wasn’t even a little bit surprised.

I figured the best I could do was ignore the dog. She’d find something better to do soon enough, or that’s what I hoped, anyway. Either way, there wasn’t nothing else I could do, aside from throwing rocks at her, and I didn’t want to do that. She wasn’t hurting nobody.

After a minute I was back on dirt, so she wasn’t as loud behind me, but I didn’t hold out hope that meant she wasn’t there. I quit worrying about it. She was going to do what she was going to do, and so was I, which in my case was go home and put down all this shit I was carrying and see if Felix had eaten anything all day or if I needed to dig him out of the library with a shovel.

You never really lost sight of the lighthouse around here, along as that’s what it was built for, but eventually I came close enough to see the house. Not long after that I spotted Felix. He was outside again, sitting on a rock with some paper for notes, maybe two septad-feet from the water.

Felix turned to look at me as I came near. He was a little tight around the mouth, but he raised an eyebrow. “You’ve grown a tail,” he said.

I took a glance even though I already knew. The mutt was still behind me. “Yeah,” I said. I shrugged, because I didn’t figure there was much more to say.

He stood up and looked her over the same way she was looking him over. They even had the same expression. “We’re not keeping it.”

“’Course not,” I said, and he squinted at me, suspicious. “I’m gonna go inside and put this stuff away.”

As I headed for the house, I heard Felix talking to the dog behind me. “Stop looking at me like that. It isn’t as if I carry food in my pockets.”

It wasn’t too long after that he came in too, when I was just finishing finding places for the things I’d bought. There was one thing that didn’t have a place yet, and I shuffled it behind me on the table when he came through the door. “You hungry yet?”

He hummed. “I could eat. Mildmay, I was wondering…has anything happened since yesterday? Anything strange, I mean.”

“Because of the spell, you mean?” I didn’t look at him. “Nah, I’m fine.”

“Good.”

“Is it working?”

“I’ve started having visions, yes,” he said, perking up. “I’m still working through understanding them, but I’ve seen a number of creatures I’ve never read about. I’ll put together a report when it’s over.”

We didn’t talk much while we cooked what was probably for him a late lunch. It was when we were setting the table that he said suddenly, “I have something for you.” His voice was weird. I looked over, and he’d gone pink. He wasn’t looking at me.

“What?” I said carefully.

“I mean—it’s not very…well…” Flustered, he shook his head. “Just a moment.” He practically ran out of the room.

He was back before I had much time to wonder if he was climbing out a window. “Here,” he said, putting a jar in my hand. “It’s for your leg.”

I unscrewed the top. The thick goop smelled like mint and trees and spice. I dipped my finger in, and it tingled.

“It should help with the cramping and the pain,” Felix said. He’d laced his hands behind his back.

“Where’d you get it?” I said. It heated up on my skin, but not so much it hurt. I wanted to try it on my leg, but I’d have to take my trousers off, so I figured I’d wait. It wasn’t nothing he hadn’t seen before, but stripping down right here and now would just feel weird.

He shifted from foot to foot. “I had it made at the apothecary in town. But, um…”

I rubbed the balm between my fingers. There was a familiar feeling to it I couldn’t pin down. “Did you do hocus shit to it?”

“Yes,” Felix said. “To improve it. Is that all right?”

I thought about it. “Well, if it’s you, that’s okay.” I screwed the top back on the jar, flexed my fingers, and wiped the rest of the goop off on a cloth. “Thanks.”

He smiled at me, a real five-alarmer, like he was relieved and thrilled and proud all at once, and my heart flipped over. Kethe, he didn’t need to do that so close up. Might’ve burned my eyes out.

“Um, I got something for you too,” I said, because it wasn’t like there was going to be a better time to tell him, and this way I got to stop looking at his grin and feeling it all the way from my guts to the tips of my fingers. I turned away to pull it out of the bag and held it out.

Felix’s eyebrows climbed up his forehead. It was a waterproof coat in the gaudy clashing colors he liked, long enough to fit him. I’d had to commission it special, along as Felix was a good head taller than most everyone who lived here.

“Your other one says it’s waterproof, but it ain’t,” I mumbled. “And it’s got holes. I saw ’em the other day.”

Real slow, his smile came back, only it was softer than before, and it made me feel like there was something fluttering around in my stomach. Shit, Milly-Fox, you didn’t think that move through.

“This is perfect, Mildmay,” he said, taking it from me, running his hands over the material. “It’s a good thing I have you. Otherwise I’d go months soaking wet and never even think to address the problem.” With the way he said it, it could’ve been snarky, but it wasn’t. He folded the coat over his arm and then looked up at me again, and his face was so open and bright, and fuck, it wasn’t fair. I loved him, there wasn’t no surprise there, but you didn’t have to go bashing me in the head with a hammer about it.

“I’ll just put this by the door,” he said. Hair fell over his face, some of those curly red strands catching on his cheek and forehead. For no earthly reason I could tell you, I wanted to smooth them back. I could practically feel my fingers tucking them behind his ear and combing through his rumpled hair, all untidy like crinkled silk or like the ocean.

Powers and saints.

I stuffed my hands in my pockets as he walked away. And I didn’t miss it when he snuck outside to toss the dog a scrap.

That night, I went to bed alone, seeing as there wasn’t no reason not to, and I fell asleep after maybe a minute of tossing and turning.

And there I was again.

“I saw the way you looked at Louis,” Keeper says. She’s on top of me, pinning me down with her knees, and she’s smiling again.

The fuck’s she talking about? But the sinking in my stomach means I know. “I wasn’t looking at no one.”

“_Anyone_, dear, I’ve told you a thousand times. I think you want him.”

“I don’t.”

“Do you think he’d want you?” she asks, but this time I can tell she don’t want me to answer, because she ain’t finished. “It’s such a shame about your face, but then again, maybe that wouldn’t bother him, especially if he took you from behind. You have a lovely body, and that’s all some men need in their molly-toys.”

I keep still, like maybe that way she won’t see me. I’m staring at the corner of the room, but her hand flies out and grabs me by the chin, forcing my face toward her. “What will I do with you, Milly-Fox? I think I’ll have to send you to the brothels.”

“No,” I argue, only it comes out more like begging. She don’t mean it. I don’t think she means it. No madam with an ounce of sense would take me, what with my scar and all, but then again, when Keeper makes up her mind—

“But it would be cruel to keep you here with me, wouldn’t it? A poor little molly-toy playing thief. Playing a woman’s lover. I’m sure some men will want you, sweetheart.”

Like a fucking talking bird, I squawk “No!” again. But I might as well save my breath. She’ll have her fun, and she’ll decide what she wants to decide. “I ain’t molly,” I say anyway, like I can’t help it, like the words are a mouthful of mud. “I ain’t.”

“_Am not_, Milly-Fox.” She strokes me, and I squeeze my eyes shut. “So prove it.”

This is a dream, part of me says. Just wake up. But it’s dark with my eyes closed, and I can hear her voice curling all around me, feel her bony hips, her skin, the squeeze of her cunt as she sinks down onto me.

I focus on her. On making her happy.

“You’re trying so hard, sweetheart,” she says. “If it’s what you really want, I won’t tell anyone. Your secret’s safe with me.”

Something’s making noise outside, a steady crashing and rolling. My eyes fly open. There she is over me, but the bed ain’t her bed, and the room ain’t her room. I’m in my room in the lighthouse.

She’s not supposed to be here. This ain’t right, none of it. I try to push her off, but she just laughs. My stomach pitches, and I try one more time, and all at once she’s gone and I’m free and I’m falling, and at the same moment the light goes out.

I held still for close to a minute, panting, trying to work my way free of the sludge in my head. Finally, I got it straight enough to know I was on the floor on my hands and knees, tangled up in sheets, and it was dark because it was only a couple hours past the septad-night. And Keeper wasn’t here. She was a long, long way away.

Fucking Kolkhis. Fucking hocus bullshit fucking with my head. I couldn’t hardly breathe, and I tried my hardest to keep from making any noise, because I was scared it’d come out a sob.

I got free eventually. Then I stood up and walked out of the room. When I was on my way down the stairs, I realized I’d forgotten Jashuki, but I didn’t go back to get him.

Where the fuck are you going, Milly-Fox? part of my brain asked, but I ignored it. I didn’t want to stay in one place. In the dark, with no light but the moon coming through the window, the house looked just like some of the places I used to see in my cat-burgling days. I didn’t even think of lighting a lamp.

I wandered into the library. Books lined up across the walls like scales. Wandered back out.

Out the front door, a gust of wind slapped me in the face. I sucked in a deep breath and let my eyes open wide. The ocean crashed against the rock, close enough I could almost taste it. I smelled the brine in the air again. Over my head, the sky was sprayed with about a million stars. Brighter than you’d ever see in Mélusine.

Something moved in the dark. I squinted and recognized the shape. The dog was trotting toward me, and a second later she bumped her head against my knee—the good one. I reached down and stroked her ears. Her fur was soft, even with the dirt. She huffed softly.

There was something tight in my chest, and I didn’t want to go back inside just yet. It felt like _she_ was there. Slowly, so as not to trip over anything, I moved forward until I found a couple boulders that butted up against each other like an L. I sat down and leaned against the crook of them, giving my leg a break. The stone was smooth and cool when I rested my cheek on it.

The dog lay down by my feet, close but not so close I could grab her, which I figure is what she was thinking. I wouldn’t’ve grabbed her anyway, but it ain’t like she could know that. She’s got brains, I thought one more time, but I kept my mouth shut. The wind was gusting and sighing, and it seemed like a shame to interrupt.

I lay down on my side so I could see the stars.

“Mildmay.”

Felix was shaking my shoulder. His worried face filled up my vision. I grunted.

“Mildmay, what are you doing out here? What happened? Is something wrong?”

I waved him out of the way and sat up. I was still outside, but the sun was up, and the dog was gone. I could feel creases from rocks printed into my skin, and my leg was all stiffened up. Nice going, Milly-Fox.

My head was blurry, like a dream got cut off in the middle, but I couldn’t remember what it was. Only a feeling like something was hunting me. ’Course, I could remember the _other_ dream just fine. Ain’t that typical.

“Mildmay!” Felix said again. Maybe he was making sure I wasn’t some different scar-faced redhead. “What happened? Why were you sleeping outside?”

I rolled my shoulders. “Wanted some air.”

“You don’t even have your shoes on.”

Shit, he was right. The more I thought about it, the more this was the kind of boneheaded stunt Felix would pull. Maybe he was rubbing off on me. Kethe, that was a thought to turn your hair gray. I was supposed to be the one with sense.

He helped me stand up. My leg was aching, but it wasn’t too bad. Together we went back inside, slowly on account of my limping. I didn’t see the dog nowhere.

Inside, Felix made tea, still looking at me like I might crack in half. I didn’t pay him no mind, just stretched out my leg. Halfway through, I remembered the balm, still on the shelf, and rubbed it into the muscle. It tingled and warmed, and the ache eased as the knots went loose. I let out a puff of air.

“Here,” Felix said, putting a mug on the table for me. “Does it help?” He was trying to look casual.

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s good.” I could see his mouth curve up out of the corner of my eye. When I’d finished up, I went and got myself some buttered toast. Felix was looking through his notes, flipping a pen between his fingers, so I got him some too. When I put it in front of him, he startled so bad he dropped the pen right on top. “Damn.”

I didn’t laugh at him, just kept quiet and went to sit down, but he looked offended anyway. “You surprised me!” he said, throwing his hands up, like I didn’t know that.

I nodded. He looked down at the toast, and his mouth twitched. Then we were both laughing, the laugh bouncing back and forth between us as he picked up the pen. Every time we looked at each other, it started again. And I don’t know how to say this without it sounding sappy, but seeing him laugh like that made me feel soft inside, warm in an aching kind of way. Out of nowhere, all I could think was that I was so fucking glad we were here, him and me.

While he was wiping the butter off the pen with a napkin, the obligation d’âme popped into my head. Not the thing itself, but the feeling of it, I guess, almost like a taste on my tongue. The taste of us, or the thing between us, if there’s any difference. Let me be real clear—I was glad it was gone. I knew Felix wouldn’t force me to kill again even if he had the chance, but it was good to hold my own leash, all the same. Kethe knows I needed the practice.

Still, sometimes I think I reached for the connection between us, and when it wasn’t there, it was like missing a step in the dark. Like reaching for a door in my mind, where if I opened it and walked down a hallway, I’d find him at the end—only now the door was gone.

Of course, I could go find him for real anytime I wanted. I wouldn’t take the binding back, not for all the money in the world. But what I’m saying is, it ain’t neat and simple like that makes it sound. Not for me, anyway. Sometimes I wondered what it was for him.

I glanced up at Felix, who was scrawling something in his notes, and got slapped by the memory of his mouth on mine. His lips moving, the soft press of them. His tongue slipping in. The sparks lighting up in my head as the kiss got deep and hard, as his lips and tongue tangled with mine and did things I can’t even fucking explain. The way for a second everything I knew about what I wanted turned inside out.

Felix found a smear of butter on the side of his pen. He wiped it off and stuck his finger in his mouth to suck.

I ripped my eyes away from his lips where they were sealed around his finger over the twisting hocus ink and jumped out of my chair.

Felix startled again. “What?” He whipped his head around, like he thought maybe an assassin had burst through the door while he wasn’t paying attention.

“Nothing,” I mumbled. “I’m gonna…” I couldn’t come up with an excuse fast enough before my legs took me out the door.

At least I remembered Jashuki this time. With the state my head was in, that was a miracle. Kethe, I’d got real turned around somewhere along the line—don’t know if it was today or yesterday—and now I didn’t know what the fuck my brain was doing. It was spooking me right out, if you want the truth.

The dog was sunbathing out on the rocks. When she heard me coming, she opened one eye, and her tail gave a thump, but she didn’t get up. There was something black and fuzzy curled behind her; the black cat was sunbathing too. Didn’t seem scared of the dog, neither—they were almost back to back.

My feet took me to Kay’s, and when I figured out where I was going, I wished I’d brought a book, but I didn’t want to go back. There’d be something to read there, or we could talk instead. Or not talk—Kay was easy like that.

Powers and saints. I hadn’t thought of that kiss in indictions. Or I’d tried not to, anyway, which might not come out to the same thing, but if you assume it’s close enough, I’ll take it as a favor.

And now here I was thinking about it again. Fuck.

When I got to Kay’s house, Julian answered the door. “Mildmay!” he said. “Have you come to see Kay?”

I shrugged. “Sure. Don’t got a book, though.”

Julian ushered me in. “Oh, that’s fine. You can always borrow one. If you want to read, that is. Do you want cake? The baker’s been teaching me. He says I have _promise_.”

I shrugged again. Before I could answer, Kay called from the sitting room, “Mildmay?”

“Yeah, it’s me,” I said, going over to the open door. “Didn’t bring a book.”

He was sitting in a wide upholstered chair, a drink in his hand. “Need not always read to me, Mildmay. We are glad for your company. Come in—Julian, will you join us?”

I went in, Julian behind me, and picked a seat, along as I didn’t want to get in my leg’s bad books again.

Kay looked good. He had a cane now, skinnier and longer than mine, that he used to figure out what was in front of him while he was going places. Right now it was leaning against his chair. “Are you well?” he asked.

I shrugged. “I’m okay. It’s been a weird day, and it ain’t even halfway done.”

“What happened?” Julian asked.

“I dunno. Just dreams.” I didn’t really want to talk about it, which begged the question of why I’d brought it up in the first place. “Yesterday a stray followed me home.”

“Oh?” Kay raised his eyebrows. “What manner of stray?”

“Dog. Followed me all the way from town.”

He laughed. “And I suppose you did nothing to encourage it?”

I blushed. “She looked hungry.”

He laughed again. He seemed happy, so I didn’t mind too much.

“We’ve been well enough,” Julian said. “I’ve been taking lessons in town from a few visiting scholars—local tradesmen too. But none today, which might be for the best. We’re having some trouble with the townspeople.”

“Only one townsperson, Julian,” Kay said. “And is my trouble, not yours.”

Julian looked hard at Kay, and Kay sipped his drink like he didn’t have a care in the world.

“What’s going on?” I asked. “You need help?”

Kay shook his head. “Is a small matter, Mildmay. Nothing of import.” He touched his cane, thoughts flickering across his face like fish in a pond. “We received a letter, and Julian is troubled.”

Julian wasn’t the only one, I thought, looking at Kay, but I figured there wasn’t no point in saying that. “What kind of letter? Threats?”

“Merely disapproval,” Kay said, flicking a hand. “An I could choose, I would not have bothered Julian with it, but of course he must read me my letters.”

“They called Kay a pervert!” Julian burst out. “They said—” He stopped. “I’m sorry, Kay. I shouldn’t tell people about it. It’s only that it’s such rubbish.”

“Need not apologize,” Kay said. His voice was calm, but he was sitting real still, back as straight as his cane, clutching onto his glass like it was going to try and get away. “Is Mildmay. I trust him, as you do, and he knows what there is to know of me.”

“You mean that you’re molly?” I asked. “That’s what they got all worked up about?”

Kay nodded. “I have been discreet, but of late I no longer see such need for secrecy. Is only sex, or love, or both. So I have not gone to overmuch trouble to hide away those relations I have pursued. Am not surprised that folk of the town may know I am violet, nor that some may dislike me for it.”

“That’s not all,” Julian said. He’d gone a little flushed. “They said Kay is—is leading me astray. Making me the way he is. Like that’s a bad thing to be.” He scowled. “They said he’s an _inappropriate influence_.” His blush got darker when he added, “They think I’m too close with a boy I take lessons with, and somehow that’s because of Kay.”

I took a second to stew on that steaming pile of horseshit, mostly along as I couldn’t think what to say to it. But I didn’t wait too long, because I didn’t want them thinking they’d been wrong to tell me. “That ain’t how none of that works.”

“I know,” Julian said, but his shoulders loosened anyway.

“Ain’t nothing wrong with it if you do like that boy,” I said. I wasn’t gonna ask, ’cause it wasn’t none of my business, but then I looked at him and thought he might want me to. “Do you?”

“Um,” Julian said. He chewed his lip. “Maybe.”

“Yeah?”

“His name’s Davy,” he said, kind of perking up. “He’s very clever, and we study together, and he’s always willing to help me, and I help him too, and…” He trailed off. “I was going to study with him today, but now I don’t know if I should. I don’t want to make trouble for Kay.”

“Yes, you should,” Kay said. “Was just saying so before you came, Mildmay.”

“Kay’s right,” I said. “You ain’t hurting no one. Just ’cause some dried-up cunt don’t want you to have fun don’t mean you got to give ’em the satisfaction.”

“Art doing nothing wrong, Julian,” Kay said. His face was held still, hard, like if he moved too quick it might break.

“It bothers you, don’t it?” I asked him.

“I give thought to all my correspondence,” Kay said, real neutral. He drained his glass and put it on the table next to him, slow and gentle, like he didn’t want to make a sound. There was a long pause. Then he said, “Julian, would you fetch that cake? Perhaps Mildmay would like to try it.”

Julian wasn’t an idiot. He knew Kay wanted him out of the room. But he just said, “Sure,” and he left, only looking back once or twice.

Kay was staring into the distance, or he looked like he was, anyway. Slowly, he said, “Was not so long ago that I believed I sinned in my feelings, if not my deeds. Now, I believe that that which wrongs no one can be no sin. But still, receiving this letter, I wonder if I hurt my position here—and if it follows that I hurt the townspeople through my indulgence. Wonder, too, if perhaps I had the right of it before.”

I shifted in my seat. I wasn’t none too comfortable talking about this, but it seemed like Kay needed to talk about it with someone, and here I was, ears and all. And the thing about talking to Kay was I couldn’t just nod or shake my head or shrug. I had to talk out loud, even when I didn’t have the first idea what the fuck to say.

“You ain’t done nothing wrong,” I said. “Not by fucking a man, not by loving one, and not by treating it like it ain’t any kind of big deal. Because it ain’t. Folks’ll always find a reason to tell you you ain’t worth the dogshit on their boots. You let it, it’ll crawl up inside you, control you. You can’t let it do that.”

“Art wise, Mildmay,” Kay said. “Speak from experience?”

I felt heat in my face. “I guess.” I hadn’t meant to or anything, but a lot of people popped up in my head. Kolkhis was biggest, probably ’cause I’d just dreamed about her. But this was different, mostly. I ain’t never wanted to fuck someone I’d get in trouble for. Not like that.

Kay sighed and picked up his glass again. “Julian, should not linger by the door.”

Julian came in with his cake, looking kind of shifty. “I wasn’t eavesdropping, I just—”

“No, indeed—only listening in secret,” Kay said, smiling. “What do you think? Do you agree with Mildmay?”

“You know I do,” Julian said. “You shouldn’t need to reshape your life because some nasty old crank says so. You aren’t hurting me. You aren’t hurting anyone. And even if you did change, it wouldn’t make them like you.”

“Mm,” Kay said. He took the fork Julian handed him and twirled it between his fingers. “Is interesting. You rush to assure me I may live and feel as I please, and I tell you the same—yet seems neither you nor I will extend this generosity to our own selves.”

After I walked back to the lighthouse, passing an empty bowl perched on the rocks nearby like it was trying to act casual, I found Felix in the library. ’Course, it was the first place I looked. He glanced over as I came in. “Were you with Kay?”

“Yeah.”

“How is he?”

I guess he’d forgotten what we talked about that morning, or maybe he’d decided to forget.

“Fine. We just talked. Julian too.”

“Is he still getting along well with his cane?”

“Looks like.” I leaned against a bookshelf. “You get any more from the spell yet?”

He looked up, his eyes so bright they threw off sparks. “Yes! It comes in bits and pieces, but I’ve been writing it all down. I might need to do it again. Later, of course, in a few weeks. I’ve seen incredible things, Mildmay—enormous creatures and tiny ones, creatures with no eyes or with dozens of limbs…” He trailed off, and I thought of telling him about the things I’d seen. At least that it was happening—but it didn’t feel like the time. Maybe I was just a coward, but that was okay for now.

I watched him flip through a book. He was still all lit up from the inside, like he’d swallowed the sun and it just kept shining out through the cracks. I looked down at the book he was holding. The pages were yellow, the letters cramped and curly. “Anything interesting in there?”

“Oh, you know.” I didn’t, but the way he waved his hand made me feel like I did. “For no reason I can identify, one of my predecessors tried to take a shark from the ocean and keep it in this house. In a tank.”

“Maybe he figured he could train it up as the next virtuer,” I offered.

A laugh popped out of him like I’d caught it by surprise. He looked up and hit me with one of his real smiles, too bright to look at straight, but it was too late, ’cause I had. My stomach flipped over at the same time that something tugged hard at my gut, and I nearly took a step toward him, the pull was that strong.

If I hadn’t had the bookshelf to hold me up, I might’ve fallen over, and wouldn’t that have been a bitch to explain to Felix. Because I sure as shit couldn’t tell him what’d just slammed straight into me like a fucking train. It wasn’t like figuring something out—it was more like a thought that was already finished before I had it, like it’d been put together and sent through the mail and was just now arriving in my head with a pretty little bow on top.

Fuck, I thought. Milly-Fox, you thrice-fucked, dung-headed, botched-up joke of an overgrown kept-thief.

I wanted him.

I’d gone and fallen in love with my brother.

Now, maybe it’s just me. But I’d put money on it that after you realize you’ve got it bad for a bastard hocus who already lives in your pocket day in and day out, and he’s your damn brother, and to top it all off you ain’t even supposed to be molly, you’ll find it ain’t so easy to go to sleep that night.

I didn’t even want to try going to bed. My head was too loud and crowded, and I just knew if I tried putting out the light and lying down, all that shit inside would drown me like high tide over some stupid fuck trying to sleep by the sea. Besides, I didn’t want to go in my room. It felt like Kolkhis was waiting for me in there. And yeah, I know exactly how batshit crazy that sounds.

It didn’t make no sense. Not one single solitary scrap. I wasn’t molly. I wasn’t even janus. Thinking about men that way always made my stomach turn or my skin feel prickly. Only now it was like those feelings had gone and turned inside out, and I didn’t know what the fuck to do with them. When I knew where I stood, there wasn’t nothing I had to worry about, but now it seemed like the land I’d been standing on was never land at all. But there wasn’t no way to get away from the truth, not now that it’d tracked me down and jumped me, garrote around my neck. Your own fault for not keeping your eyes open, Milly-Fox.

The really backward part is that I wanted to sleep in Felix’s room. Not to fuck—just to have him close. Like being around him was safe, even though he was the same damn thing that scared me.

Or something.

But I couldn’t. I couldn’t go ask him for that any more than I could knock him up. Even the thought made my lungs feel tight.

Don’t ask me how it could be safe and dangerous enough to choke me at the same time. I don’t have the first fucking clue.

So I pretended like I was going to bed while Felix got ready, and when his door was closed, I went downstairs to wander around in peace.

But I wasn’t in peace. There was something inside me clawing to get out. I could feel her over my shoulder, and I could hear her laughter in the sound of the ocean slamming itself against the cliff.

_Finally gone molly, Milly-Fox?_

“Shut up,” I mumbled. The words came out slurred worse than usual. My heart was beating too hard, and I could feel the way my mouth didn’t want to work right, the way my scar pulled it out of shape and crooked. My face was hot.

_What was that? Speak up._

I went into the kitchen and opened the cupboard. My hands were shaking.

_I don’t know why you bothered pretending, Milly-Fox. I could see from the beginning what you really wanted. If I’d sent you to the brothels to be a molly-toy, it would have been a kindness._

I nearly slammed the cupboard closed, caught it just in time so as not to wake up Felix. “Fuck off!” My voice was a growl, and I knew I was being an idiot, talking to the air, but I was too mad to care. She always said shit because she liked seeing how I’d act—it wasn’t like I didn’t know that. She liked how she could make me dance for her, any way she wanted. She liked all the different ways of tugging on my leash.

Fuck her. I wasn’t on nobody’s leash no more, not hers, not Felix’s, nobody’s. I’d be fucked if I’d let that bitch control me from the other side of the fucking continent. There wasn’t nothing wrong with wanting to fuck someone just ’cause he was a man. Go to Hell, Kolkhis, I thought, and just to spite her I pictured it in my head: Felix pressed naked against me, his prick hard against my stomach, his mouth licking into mine.

All my blood rushed south at the same time that my stomach lurched with the kind of fear that usually meant someone was about to die, and in a second I was hard as a rock and dizzy, wanting, sick, clutching the table to keep from falling on my ass. Or running away.

I could hear Kolkhis laughing inside my head.

Something in me snapped. “Shut up!” I said again, only this time it was a shout. “I never fucking asked you!” Not even once, but she’d had to fuck with my head, not just the rest of me. She wouldn’t let me figure out a single damn thing by myself, and that was smart, ’cause when I did, I left her. And now I’d been away from her more than a septad, and she still wouldn’t—

“Mildmay?”

Felix was standing on the stairs in his nightshirt, looking at me like he thought I might be someone else. “Are you all right?”

Fuck.

There wasn’t no light but the moon, but it still made shadows in his collarbones. His hair was getting long again, falling on his neck all curly and soft. It felt like there was something pulling me toward him, and at the same time I wanted to run out the door and keep going right across the ocean ’til I found myself a new continent. My heart was beating as fast as if I’d already started.

It flashed into my head again, that kiss when he’d cast the binding-by-forms. And fuck it, fuck it all, I wanted more.

“Mildmay?”

I dropped my eyes. My hands still wouldn’t quit shaking. “I’m okay. Sorry I woke you up.”

“You were shouting,” Felix said. It was almost a question. He came over to the table.

“I…” I didn’t know how to answer. “I’m okay,” I said again.

“You should sleep,” he said. “You’re always telling me that, aren’t you?” Real careful, he reached out to take my hand. He reached out more and more these days, but the touch still felt like static shock. I just barely kept myself from making a sound. His hand was warm from bed as his long fingers wrapped around mine, and he didn’t say nothing about the shaking, even though he couldn’t’ve missed it. There was a dent between his eyebrows, a deeper shadow in the shadowy dark. “Come upstairs,” he said. So I did.

He came right into my room with me, stood awkward while I leaned Jashuki against the wall and sat down on the bed. His skew eyes were fixed on me, searching. “Do you want me to stay?” he asked suddenly.

I’d just been starting to get my heart to act normal again, and let me tell you, that did not help even a little bit. I shook my head before I could even think about it, my lungs gone tight.

“All right.” He let it go. “You’ll sleep, won’t you?”

“Yeah,” I said. And I didn’t know if I was telling the truth, but even after everything, I did.

When I woke up, Felix’s door was still closed. That was fine. Gave me time to think.

Out the kitchen window, the sky was full of clouds. It looked like it’d rained while I was sleeping, mud churned up, stamped with paw prints. Big and little. There was another empty bowl out on the rocks.

After eating, I went out to check on the lighthouse. Soon as I was a septad-foot from the door, I had a shadow. “Hey,” I said. “I got the feeling you made a friend. Even if he won’t admit it.”

The dog came closer. I held out my hand, and she licked it. At that point I figured I’d better quit kidding myself. “Okay, fine,” I told her. “I like you. You can stay, if you want.”

She just kept trotting along next to me like she’d never thought no different, and when I opened the lighthouse door, she squeezed in past me before I could think about telling her no. I figured it wasn’t worth the effort. “Fine,” I told her. “Just don’t shit on the floor.”

The dog didn’t spare me a backward glance. She wanted to know what was up the stairs.

She waited for me at each landing while I hauled my crippled ass up the steps. When we were in the lantern room, she sniffed around and then lay down on the floor while I did my checks. Once I’d done everything I could think of doing and stretched out my leg for good measure, I sat down next to her.

I’d thought it all might go away in the night, even though I knew better—I’ve known better my whole life, seems like. Now there wasn’t nothing to do but reckon with it. It still made my chest feel hot and tight to think about—scared, you got me, I was fucking scared—but it didn’t feel as big as last night. The fear was there inside me, in my lungs, but it wasn’t around me. It wasn’t the air I breathed. And I’d had my whole life to practice getting along while my lungs caused trouble. They weren’t gonna beat me now.

So I wanted Felix. So maybe I was janus after all. So maybe I always had been. That left the question of what the fuck I should do next. All I really knew was that I didn’t want Kolkhis tugging my leash no more.

The dog shuffled closer. Slowly, like I might not notice if she did it slow enough, she put her head in my lap. I scratched her ears and thought.

The clouds were thicker and darker when we went back outside. A fleck of rain hit my cheek. “Felix?” I called, looking around. I caught a flash of the black cat before he darted out of sight under a bush.

“I’m here.”

I followed his voice, and the dog followed me. My brother was wandering along the shore again, taking notes. His shoulders were tight and his face was pale when he looked at me, but he tried a smile. The rain was starting to come down for real now.

“It’s raining,” I said, along as I wasn’t too sure he’d noticed.

He just nodded. “I was finishing up anyway. Let’s go in.”

We headed back toward the house together, and I felt myself winding up tighter than clockwork, because I was scared if I didn’t talk now, I never would. Well, I was scared about a lot of things, to be perfectly fucking frank. But some stuff you can’t do nothing about except keep moving.

“There’s something I gotta tell you,” I said finally. It felt like my throat was locked up tighter than a flashie’s house, and the words had heard some nasty stories about what the flashie did to thieves, besides. But they were out now, and he was looking at me, eyebrows raised, and I had to keep going.

“I been thinking.” Why the fuck didn’t I figure this out ahead of time? “About…you. And me. You and me. I mean—”

He looked kind of panicked. “What do you mean? Is something wrong?”

“No, it’s fine. Mostly. Or it will be. I hope.” Fuck, shut your fucking mouth, Milly-Fox. But I couldn’t. “It’s just that I been thinking—” And now I was back where I started.

He stared at me. I stared at him. We’d stopped walking. Fuck it, I thought, and I screwed up every ounce of nerve I could find and lurched toward him and stood up on my toes and kissed him square on the mouth.

He didn’t move, same as if I had a knife to his throat. My hand was on the back of his neck to pull him down to me, his hair getting wet against my fingers. His mouth was soft and stunned.

It was two seconds, maybe three, but it felt like a decad. I didn’t try nothing fancy, just held my mouth against his and hoped for the best. Then I pulled away before he could push me, even though that meant I had to look him in the eyes.

Those eyes were big and shocked, almost scared. No, definitely scared. And too confused to even try and hide it. “Mildmay, you…you’re…I don’t understand.”

I didn’t understand so good myself, but I nodded. I’d gone kind of shaky. “Let’s get inside, okay? We can talk about it where it’s dry as good as we can here.”

The rain was coming down in sheets by the time we got in the house, so I went up to my room to find dry clothes. Felix followed me in. “I don’t understand,” he said again. I don’t think he even noticed I was rummaging through my wardrobe, even though he was staring at me like I might turn into a dragon. It sure as fuck didn’t occur to him I was gonna change and might want some privacy.

I laid a dry shirt and trousers on the bed, and since he didn’t look like he was going nowhere, I turned to start a fire in the little woodstove in the corner of my room, still dripping. It was easier to talk when I didn’t have to look at him. “I know all the shit I said before. But I been thinking about it more, and I…” I swallowed. “I want it. You.”

“Since when?” Felix’s voice was disbelieving.

I glared at him over my shoulder. The fire caught, and I poked at the wood and shut the door, getting up. “I don’t know, okay? It’s confusing. But I ain’t lying. I guess that spell shook some things loose. Made me think.”

“The spell? Damn.” He got that look on his face like he wanted to go all academic, find out exactly what had happened and study it ’til it begged for mercy, but then all the other thoughts chased the look away. Felix sighed and bit his lip. “I don’t think you’re lying, Mildmay. But I can’t help wondering if you’re convincing yourself into something for my sake. I—I’m trying to be better. If I took advantage and hurt you, I’d never…look, you’ve told me a number of times you aren’t interested in men.”

“I know that, but this is different, and I ain’t. Ain’t convincing myself, I mean. Look, I said no all the other times when I didn’t want it, so why wouldn’t I now if I didn’t? We ain’t even bound.”

“Yes, but that’s exactly it.” He yanked a handful of his wet hair and stared at me like I was hurting him. “You didn’t want it before, so why do you now?”

I threw up my hands. “Ain’t you ever started wanting someone when you didn’t used to? Only it’s more complicated than that. You and me…we’re tangled up in ways that ain’t just wanting or not wanting. I dunno when I started feeling this way. I think ‘started’ ain’t even the right word. But I know I feel it, and I can decide for myself what I want. You ain’t forcing me, and I sure as fuck ain’t going to force you, neither. So now you know. Do you still want me like that?”

His spooky skew eyes bored into mine for one second, two. Three. His lips parted. His hands flexed.

And then he crossed the space between us in two strides of his long legs, and my hands came up so he wouldn’t bowl me over, and he kissed me.

We were kissing. For real this time.

His hand came up to cup the side of my face. I could feel his rings like a row of river stones. He caught hold of my lower lip with his teeth, and I felt a jolt of want low in my belly and curled my fingers in his damp shirt so I didn’t fly right out of my body. And then it was like we were trying to swallow each other whole. I could smell him, that Felix smell on his sheets and pillow filling up my lungs, and he tasted like salt from the wind that came off the ocean, and his mouth was hot and slick.

It wasn’t weird. It should’ve been weird, but it wasn’t. It was just us.

I broke away, and we stared at each other, both of us breathing hard, his eyes wide and fixed on mine. I licked my lips to taste him again. “You’re sure…” he said.

“Yeah,” I said, and I pushed him up against the wall to get my mouth on his neck, suck at the soft skin under his jaw like candy. Felix moaned my name and pulled me even closer, and I could feel his cock hard against my belly. It wasn’t strange the way I thought it’d be. He dug a hand into my hair to pull my head back and kiss me again. Everything was a septad-times more intense than regular, sharper and brighter, like it was gonna pierce right through to the center of me, and powers, I just wanted more.

He licked the corner of my mouth, and I felt a weird numb tingle where his tongue passed over my scar. To cover the stutter in my heart, I sank my teeth into his lower lip. His hands were at my hips now, rucking up my shirt and slipping underneath, touching my waist and my back and my stomach like he was scared I’d disappear, and I couldn’t breathe right, but I felt like as long as I kept kissing him, I didn’t really need to. I was hard and aching in my trousers, and I didn’t know what I wanted more—to touch him or for him to touch me.

Every time he shifted against me, I felt it against my cock, against every inch of us that was touching. It was almost too much, but I didn’t want him to stop. I tangled my hand in his curly hair, wet from the rain. The fire was hot against one side of our bodies. I wanted to take off his shirt, to see him, but Kethe, I was scared. My heart slammed against my ribs.

“Can you…” I said between kisses, and I tugged at his shirt.

He pulled away, and a groan slipped out of my mouth, dumb and needy. Even with the fire, the air felt so cold without him. He undid his buttons as quickly as he could, and I undid mine. It felt like I was unbuttoning my chest, opening up my ribs to show him my pounding heart inside. We both shrugged the shirts off our shoulders. Then we were stuck again, just looking at each other.

I’d seen him in less clothes septads of times, but now I was allowed to really look. He’d filled out some in Grimglass, so his ribs didn’t poke out quite so much. He was still near as pale as his books, and the gaudy tattoos twining up his arms stood out like blood on bedsheets. I looked at his collarbones, the way his waist tucked in, the sprinkling of hair from his belly button down to his trousers. As my eyes traced back up his body, I saw goose bumps prickle across his skin, his nipples harden and peak like someone’d pinched them. When I got back to his face, I saw the look in his eyes—hungry, but scared too, like he was ready to be hit. Or more like he was ready for me to puke on him and run. Like maybe I forgot somehow he was a guy, but now I was about to remember, and that’d be it for this. He was frozen, waiting, his eyes flicking down over me every other second to eat up what they could before it was gone.

But I wasn’t going nowhere.

I took one quick, awkward step forward and put my hands on his skinny hips, running my thumbs along the grooves. My bad leg was shaking. I could feel one or two of the scars on his back where my fingers wrapped around, smooth and ropy, but I didn’t treat them no different. He shivered and sucked in a breath, and then he was moving again, and one hand was on my neck and the other on my ass, and I felt it like fire, and then there wasn’t no space between us and we were grinding together. I could feel every inch, every shift, and my breath was coming in hard pants, and somehow my hands found their way to his ass too, pulling him hard against me. Noises got tangled up between our mouths. I felt Felix’s rings against my skin as he snaked a hand between us and fumbled with the fastenings to our trousers.

Kolkhis flashed into my mind, and I slammed the doors shut against her. I started helping Felix, but it seemed like forever until the rest of our clothes were shucked off and it was bare skin against bare skin, hot from the fire and smooth, and another groan tore out of my throat. Fuck, both my legs were shaking now—I couldn’t stop them, my kneecaps jumping like crickets in a jar. His cock was hard and naked against my hip, the tip leaving a wet smear where it touched me, and I was so dizzy with want and fear I thought I might black out. For a second, panic reared up and almost swamped me.

“You’re trembling,” Felix said. “Do you want to stop?”

I shook my head, and just like that, the panic drained away. This was Felix. This was us. It didn’t have nothing to do with Kolkhis or the things she liked to whisper.

It was just me and my brother, right where I wanted to be.

“Then let’s lie down before we fall,” he said.

He nudged me over to my bed, and fuck, that was fine with me. I pushed him down and climbed on top. This way I could line us up just right, and the first drag of our cocks against each other made both our mouths drop open. “Fuck,” I chanted. “Fuck, fuck, fuck—”

He grabbed my hips and pulled me down harder. It was too much, all Felix’s skin pressed hot against mine, and I couldn’t get enough. I rubbed against him even when the friction burned, both of us leaving smears of wet on each other’s hips.

“Wait,” Felix said, the word coming out a gasp, his pupils so wide his eyes almost matched. “Let me…” He dragged his tongue flat across his hand, and then his long fingers with their gaudy rings were wrapped around both our pricks, and I nearly came right then.

“Felix,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said, his voice not quite so flash as usual, and he stroked us. The slick made it good enough to cry, and he did these things with his wrist that made sparks shoot up and down my spine. But more than anything it was that it was him, my brother, Felix, with the hard stripes of his rings pressing into my cock and his skew eyes staring into mine and his hair falling around his face in a wild red crown. That’s what made my gut draw tight and my cock jerk, made me feel like I was burning up from the inside.

I came first, if you really want to know. And I might’ve felt embarrassed about it, too, except when my eyes screwed shut and my mouth dropped open and I made some kind of noise I couldn’t even hear with the blood roaring through my ears like the ocean and my come splattered over his fingers and the crease of his hip—well, when I could see again, Felix looked like I’d given him a fucking present. He stroked me through the aftershocks and then moved his hand to just his own prick so he could finish jerking himself off, but I grabbed at his wrist, clumsy as a drugged bear. “I want to—”

He let go, still staring at me like I’d granted him three wishes instead of made a mess of us both. I licked my lips and looked at his cock. It was curved to one side and flushed as pink as his nipples. I got this feeling like I wanted to take it in my mouth, kiss the smooth skin, make him feel good like I’d do with a girl in my bed, but to be straight up honest with you, I was too much of a coward. Maybe next time.

I wrapped my fist around him instead, stroked him slow and steady, then faster when he squirmed and bit his lips. Kethe, he was gorgeous. It ain’t like I didn’t know that from the first second I saw him, but I guess there’s something about having someone spread out naked and desperate under you that makes you realize in a whole new way.

It wasn’t more than a minute before he cried my name and thrashed like a wild thing, bucking hard enough he would’ve thrown me off if I didn’t have a good seat. Fuck, I don’t think what I did was anything to write home about, seeing as I ain’t never touched no one’s cock but my own, but from the look on his face, you’d think it was me who grew up in Pharaohlight with a bag of tricks fit to bring a grown man to tears. He shuddered all over when he came, some of it landing on his stomach to mix with mine and some hitting my chest. I wiped it off and wondered if it tasted the same as mine or if there was something different, something _Felix_ about it.

Rather than try and find out, I leaned forward and kissed him one more time. His lips were swollen from him biting them, and he didn’t do nothing fancy with his tongue this time, just made a soft little sound and kissed me back. When I pulled away, he was giving me that look again, like I was something amazing and beautiful and he couldn’t believe his luck. I could feel myself blushing. But I didn’t want to leave.

We got cleaned up and ate some food, read some, but it wasn’t long before we went back upstairs to curl up on Felix's bed. The rain was coming down hard on the roof. I don’t know if I reached for Felix’s hand or him for mine, but one way or another, our fingers wound up laced together. We didn’t mean to fall asleep—it wasn’t even dinnertime—but it couldn’t have been longer than a few minutes before I was out.

I woke up before Felix did when the sun sank down to press against the ocean. He was still facing me, his fingers curled on the sheet and his hair sticking out in all the wrong directions. I couldn’t see much of the sky, but it looked clear, just streaky wisps of clouds. Fuck, I guess both of us needed the sleep.

I only realized what had woken me up when it came again. A scratching sound, a clicking. Something moving downstairs.

My heart kicked into a trot, and I swung my legs out of bed real quiet. Felix kept sleeping as I eased the door open and crept down the stairs. When I got to the bottom, I let out all the air in my lungs at once.

The dog was sitting in the middle of the kitchen, looking at me like I was late for an appointment. And she wasn’t alone, neither.

“Kethe,” I said. “How the fuck did you get in here?”

She tilted her head. The black cat sitting next to her licked his paw and looked me over with bright hazel eyes.

“You know, this ain’t a hotel,” I told them. But I already knew it wasn’t no use. “You thirsty?”

As I was looking for a bowl, Felix’s voice came from behind me. “There’s some dried meat in the cupboard.”

I turned around. His clothes were all rumpled, and he hadn’t had a chance to tame his hair, and I got this little shock seeing him, like, oh right, that happened. Oh fuck, I want that to keep happening. Oh Kethe, it’s gonna.

I couldn’t say none of that without sounding like an idiot, so instead I said, “You let them in, didn’t you?”

He looked embarrassed. “Yes. After, well. Before we went to sleep.” He ran a hand through his hair. “The storm, you know. They looked cold.”

“Uh-huh.” I looked between the three of them and figured it couldn’t’ve ended any other way. Okay, yeah—I wouldn’t want it to.

As I opened the cupboard, Felix was shifting on his feet like there was some other thing he wanted to say. I knew better than to try to pry it out of him; he’d clam up faster than a thief in the Kennel. So I let him be as I poured water, then tore up the meat and gave it to the animals, who scarfed it down in seconds. “You want any tea?” I said. “I was just gonna make some.”

“Yes, thank you,” he said. He took a few more steps into the room, and the dog sniffed him. He held out his hand for her to smell. “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “About what you said the other day. If you’re still willing to teach me to swim”—he took a deep breath and squared his shoulders—“I’m willing to learn.”

“Okay,” I said, and then I didn’t say nothing else, because I didn’t want to spook him with how fucking relieved I was, and I didn’t think I could keep it from my voice.

It was a minute or two later when Felix said, “Do they have names yet?”

I looked over. He was sitting cross-legged against the wall, the dog drinking her water to the left and the cat sniffing his fingers real delicate-like.

“Nah,” I said. “But I got a feeling they will.”

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are very much appreciated <3
> 
> For what it's worth, the working title of this document was "wait! he isn't straight! (janus surprise)"


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